Let's hope Sox don't get buried during FBI dig

We long-suffering White Sox fans should be excited and thrilled about how the team has been playing lately.

But I'm a native South Sider, and therefore a pessimist. So I'm worried about evil omens, and about the mati, or the evil eye, on the ballclub. Here's why.

The FBI is still digging a hole under the Sox parking lot, searching for the bones of Outfit enforcer Mike "Hambone" Albergo. And, in what clearly is not a coincidence, almost every August since 1970, the month Hambone Albergo disappeared and was perhaps buried in Bridgeport, the Sox have played lousy baseball. You can't win anything in baseball if you don't win in August.

Add this to all the praise the Sox are getting, and the fact that fans in Kansas City and Minneapolis (and some Cubs fans) are seething with jealousy, and it all adds up to the mati.

I figure it's time for all of us White Sox fans to do something.

It's time we call on my Thea Mimika Pappas for insurance.

Thea (Aunt) Mimika is an excellent baker of crusty olive bread and other fine loaves, a Sox fan, and a kind, loving grandmother. But what truly makes her unique is this:

Thea Mimika is our family exorcist.

She's the one who gets rid of the kako mati, literally "evil eye," but we just say mati for short. Greeks and other Mediterranean people understand the power of the evil eye. And Thea Mimika is our family's shield.

And what could be more full of mati than the bones of a murdered Outfit thug, perhaps buried under a Sox parking lot, with the Sox in a pennant race in August?

Some people don't believe in the mati, and they argue that no layperson should ever utter the anti-mati prayers. These critics are priests, desperate to protect their jobs.

"Mom gets about four or five mati calls a week, because everybody knows she's the evil-eye expert," said my cousin John. "If you feel lousy, if you've got a headache, if you don't feel right and you think somebody put the mati on you, she's the one you call.

"She just got a call from Naples, Fla. The guy said, `Mimika, please, do me.' She did. She has her secret prayers. It works, even over a cell phone."

Since ancient times, the mati has been triggered by too much praise. After receiving months of ridicule, the Sox have been getting plenty of praise lately from former critics.

Those afflicted with the mati feel as if they're tired, unable to move quickly, weak. The last thing we need is Magglio Ordonez or Frank Thomas or Paul Konerko to get the mati. We just got the mati off Konerko, without his knowledge.

"If you say good things about someone, you better spit three times," Sam Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, explained. "If you don't, that could give the mati. That's why people spit, not spit really wet, just with air, like this, ptu, ptu, ptu, three times.

"One guy in our village back home, he said to my father, `Oh, what beautiful sheep you have,' because my father had nice flocks. Guess what? Three sheep died right there. Dead like stones. So don't joke about the mati."

Add the FBI digging for the murdered Hambone's hambones--lying there all these years--and you can see a possible mati disaster.

While Chicago politicians and Outfit bosses waited for the FBI to unearth Hambone, I asked a young Hyde Park mathematician to study the issue.

Russell Kohn is a teenage intern hanging out in my office for a few weeks before he goes to college to study boring stuff like math. Yet, as the editor of his high school newspaper, Russell wanted to learn about journalism, so I've taught him important skills, like how to properly order my Italian beef sandwiches "beef, dry, hot" and how to get me Dr Pepper and ice on deadline.

But as the FBI dig proceeded on Thursday, we put computer skills to work crunching White Sox statistics for every August in the 33 seasons since Hambone got whacked.

"If they lose more than they win in August, that's not good, is it?" Russell asked.

He found that since 1970, the Sox have played substandard baseball in August.

They won 454 games. But they lost 485 games, for an anemic winning percentage of .483.

That won't win a pennant. And I can't stand the thought of it, so I called Thea Mimika.

"Are you making fun of the mati?" she asked. "If you're making fun, I'll boil you."

No, Thea, I'm not making fun.

"Well, if they find the gangster, here's what you do," she said. "Go over there and take some holy water and sprinkle it in, but don't tell a priest, or they'll get angry."